In the market’s current climate, where borrowing costs have risen due to interest rate rises and drastic changes have taken place in the sale prices being achieved, how you disseminate this information to your clients and what you need to be aware of has also changed.
With something as significant as buying and selling a property, getting from start to finish will always take a bit of time. However, there are plenty of ways you, as a professional, can help speed up the process.
In any housing transaction there are three primary parties: sale agents, financial mortgage advisers, and legal advisers – and the relationship between those is integral to helping not only improve the time scale but also reducing the abortive cancellation rates.
Dealing with property sales day in and day out, we can often forget and lose sight that, for the client, it is one of the most stressful things that they will do in their lifetime. Therefore, it is our job to try and limit that stress as much as possible.
The sales market remains buoyant despite rising mortgage rates, but as expected the number of properties has recovered, and there is less competition compared to the busy market period in July 2022.
In contrast, the number of viewings and valuations have now dropped, indicating a shift to only the more serious homebuyers and sellers remaining proactive in the market.
In July, the average number of viewings per available property was one and a half, compared to three in June, which indicates that those looking to buy are determined to do so and are acting quickly to secure their property.
What that now means is that good quality mortgage advisers and agents working tightly in conjunction with each other will be imperative to keep transactions together and ultimately improve customer satisfaction.
Sharing information is vital
We know that nationally, between 25 and 30 per cent of transactions fall through and a lot of those are due to the lack of communication between buyers and sellers. But also, more importantly, the professionals who are guiding them through that process.
There are numerous examples of where the financial adviser, the conveyancer and the estate agent have worked together and have realistically seen property transactions concluded in some 14 to 21 days quicker purely because of cohesive communication.
The estate agents traditionally have the biggest oversights within the whole of the property transaction as they are the only people who actually deal with all parties such as the buyers, sellers, mortgage advisers from both sides and conveyancers from both sides.
Therefore, it is imperative that they are kept in the loop as they can instruct all parties on progress being made throughout the whole of the selling/buying process and limit overlap, duplicate conversations and time spent across the board.
One of the issues that occurs due to a lack of information is that the conveyancer is yet to be informed of the mortgage offer being submitted.
